About 600km north-west of Chicago, in Minneapolis, there is a group called RugbyLaw who are equally optimistic about the future of the 15-man sport, though their ideals seem certain to pitch them into a battle with the sport's governing body, United States Rugby (USAR).
The partnership, which includes Americans George Robertson and Mike Clements, and has former All Black Craig Dowd as their Southern Hemisphere envoy, aims to establish a six-team professional league - the National Rugby football League - by 2016.
Their efforts have been met with scepticism, if not hostility, by the established governing bodies.
Those talked to at the gala dinner expressed doubt the NRFL would fly, that USAR had the right infrastructure and pathways in place now to take the sport to the next level, without the need for a private, commercially driven alternative.
Clements, an evangelist for the start-up league, believes authorities have their heads buried in the sand. He said there was $10 billion flowing through the NFL each year.
There is an "obsession", he says, "for contact, tackle sport" in this country and rugby was the obvious answer.
"Minneapolis is building a $1 billion stadium that will be rugby compliant. The people who built it thirst for contact, tackle sport. It's a logical flow-through," he says.
Where RugbyLaw and USAR are on the same page is that there is a huge catchment pool of talent that has yet to be fully tapped into. Each year, thousands upon thousands of athletes are playing American football in high school and universities, but when they finish there are just 32 NFL teams with 51-man rosters to squeeze into.
The players who don't make the pros, do not really have an outlet and this is where rugby needs to be more attractive and inviting, rather than just concentrating on the minority kids who have chosen rugby from the start.
"Too much talent has been dismissed here because they didn't have a rugby ball under their arm in the birthing suite," says Clements. "The NRFL] will give these guys somewhere to go."
RugbyLaw is hosting combines, to start sourcing talent for the NRFL, meanwhile USAR and its CEO Nigel Melville are hoping the arrival of the All Blacks at a packed Soldier Field, will provide impetus in his efforts to push rugby into the mainstream.
"It's us putting a marker down to say that this is possible over here. If we can get the right teams to come and visit and stage great events like this then we can really move the game forward," he told the Rugby Site.
Perhaps the biggest coup is the live television of the game on one of the country's major networks, NBC.
"We want to make this aspirational. We want the young kids who watch this on TV to say, 'Wow, this is great - I want to be an Eagle.' It's not always had that chance before so this is a huge opportunity for us.
"We are the fastest growing team sport in America and that is a significant step for us and this is another way of showing that and what's going on.
"We are some way off being professionals and some way off being a Tier 1 team but we are heading in the right direction and these things take time."
Over at RugbyLaw, it's the "time" word that sticks. They want rugby to push its way into the professional mainstream, and they want it now.
* Dylan Cleaver is in Chicago courtesy of All Blacks Tours. Book World cup packages online at www.allblackstours.com
